From: "June K. Schmidt" <JSchmidt_at_library.msstate.edu>
Collection Development Librarians of Academic Libraries Discussion
Group
January 21, 2006
Table 6: Open access (OA) journals. What policies and
practices are academic libraries putting in place? Facilitator:
David Feinmark, Washburn University
Recorder: Adrian Ho, University of Houston
Selection of OA Journals Bibliographers are responsible for
identifying and selecting OA journals The Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ) is usually used as the source for identifying OA
journals. All titles listed there are peer-reviewed and most of them
are published in English. However, DOAJ seems to be more
science/technology-oriented. The selection criteria are the same as
those for subscription-based journals. Bibliographers would ask
questions such as:
-How relevant and useful is this OA journal to the college/university
curricula and the faculty's research interests?
-If the library had to pay for it, would we subscribe to it?
-Is it published in a language spoken by library users?
It seems harder to evaluate Humanities and Social Sciences OA journals
Sometimes faculty members (e.g., mathematics faculty) suggest specific
OA journals to the library Selected OA journals are added to the
library's catalog and online journal A-Z list (if there is one)
Promotion of OA Journals Librarians can promote OA journals at
departmental meetings. OA journals are not portrayed as replacements
for subscription-based journals. There are problems with convincing
faculty of OA journals' values and trustworthiness. Librarians have
to point out that faculty members should evaluate OA journals by
considering their contents instead of their mastheads. Older
science/technology faculty members are more open to OA journals because
they no longer have to publish in well-known non-OA journals for
attaining tenure OA journals are not visible to users because most of
them are not indexed by A&I databases
Questions about OA Journals Since most OA journals are not indexed by
A&I databases, can users rely on Google Scholar to find OA journals and
the articles therein? Does the usage statistics of OA journals matter?
What are OA journals' stability and longevity in general?
Submitted by:
June Schmidt
Associate Dean for Technical Services
Mitchell Memorial Library
P.O. Box 5408
Mississippi State, MS 39762
662-325-7672
Received on Sat Feb 18 2006 - 02:29:52 EST